Medicaid

Just days after its board approved a flat budget with no provider cuts for the new fiscal year, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority told the federal government it plans to cut more than $200 million in payments to state hospitals under the state’s Medicaid program.

Oklahoma Republican lawmakers are dead-set on reversing a 2020 vote to enshrine Medicaid expansion in the state's constitution. Their two-prong effort to remove the language and shrink Soonercare in the state came as a surprise to the Democratic minority.

If approved, the measures could remove Medicaid expansion from the state constitution or allow the Legislature to not fully cover its costs if federal support changes.

Hern said he didn’t know just how sweeping the impacts of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would be, especially on local health care systems.

Proposed federal Medicaid cuts could significantly impact hundreds of Oklahomans with intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to officials at A New Leaf, a nonprofit based in Owasso.

An Oklahoma representative is telling reporters he’s okay with President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal grants and funding streams.

Oklahoma medical students are working with the State Medical Association to propose a measure that would expand coverage of prostate cancer screening under Medicaid.

"Nuila practices internal medicine in Houston at Ben Taub Hospital, but the doctor's new book might take place in any big city where the uninsured -- like the patients he chronicles here -- face astronomical fees, mazes of endless paperwork, and poor or insufficient diagnoses made by exhausted medical professionals. Nuila's storytelling gifts place him alongside colleagues like Atul Gawande." -- The Los Angeles Times

We offer a discussion of this new report with the executive director of the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, a Tulsa-based nonprofit.

"Nuila practices internal medicine in Houston at Ben Taub Hospital, but the doctor's new book might take place in any big city where the uninsured -- like the patients he chronicles here -- face astronomical fees, mazes of endless paperwork, and poor or insufficient diagnoses made by exhausted medical professionals. Nuila's storytelling gifts place him alongside colleagues like Atul Gawande." -- The Los Angeles Times